Service substitutions (e.g., “blackouts”) occur when content that's supplied on one video service is to be removed or replaced by a static message or supplanted by content from a different service for a limited window of time. For example, service substitutions are widely used in the United States for sports programming. This feature is used even more widely on a global basis, such as to substitute local program sources for United States sources in Canada and for other creative reasons by other network operators.
Traditional industry implementations performed the substitution by switching video encoders that source the content. Thus, the traditional industry implementations relied on creating “bottlenecks” at different stages of the content distribution process using expensive devices to limit access to the content and therefore substitute content that is not to be viewed at a particular location with other content. Equipment that was used to implement these traditional techniques, however, was often expensive to employ. Further, these traditional techniques do not address modern techniques that have been developed to communicate content.